


The Host

by leiascully



Series: The FBI's Most Unwanted [28]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Banter, Episode Related, Gen, Partnership
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 19:27:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4449305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Maybe you'll find some kind of monster alligator while you're down there," she teased.  "The New Jersey Nessie."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Host

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: 2.02 "The Host"  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

He had never thought that he would need another person to remind him of the importance of his work. Not even Diana, who had shouldered the burden of proof with him with a willing heart, or so he'd thought. But here was Scully, sitting with him in the dark, reassuring him that the truth was out there, and offering to slice and dice his mysterious corpse. 

\+ + + + 

"I can't believe you've got your own office, Scully," he said as they walked down the familiar halls at Quantico. 

She smiled. "You won't like it, Mulder."

"No alien artifacts?" he teased. "No old-newspaper wallpaper? No slide projector?"

"Worse," she told him. "No VCR."

"And they call this a civilized country," he murmured. 

"I can't imagine why," she said. 

"Still," he said, "seems like you're moving up in the world. Your own office. Special Agent Instructor Doctor Dana Scully. Meanwhile, I'm either locked in a closet or down in the sewers."

"Maybe you'll find some kind of monster alligator while you're down there," she teased. "The New Jersey Nessie."

"Nessie's not an alligator, Scully," he corrected lightly. "Cryptozoologists have ruled out the possibility of most reptiles being able to thrive in the relatively cold waters of the loch. Current theory suggests some variety of long-necked pinniped, a semi-aquatic mammal that might be related to the kelpies of local legend."

"Of course," she said gravely. "A long-necked pinniped. That would explain the long neck."

"Wouldn't it?" he asked, holding a door open for her. She ducked under his arm, and it all felt so familiar, the partnership officially dissolved but the choreography of it still intact. Wax on, wax off: they'd gone through the motions until their responses were instinctive. There was comfort in that; the strength of the double bond he and Scully had made together was the closest thing he'd found to a universal invariant.

\+ + + + 

It had helped, when Skinner had sent him back out to wade through raw sewage, to know that Scully had his back, all the way from Quantico. She had laughed and said it was like the old days. Not so old, he'd thought. There was a sense of deep irony in the way that their superiors thought it mattered if he and Scully were assigned away from each other. Perhaps the shadowy men upstairs hadn't been thorough in their investigation of the investigators of the X-Files. But they, like all men, were prone to miscalculation. Scully had been an unknown quantity; They had added her up and gotten one result, while Mulder, hazy on the fundamentals of mathematics, had found her infinitely greater than the sum of her parts. Their integration had been complete. What they had wrought together, no man could put asunder, not by anything short of global catastrophe. 

Human error had caused Chernobyl, which had resulted in the genesis of the Flukeman and other creatures like him. The consequences of these errors only increased in magnitude as the investigation into them deepened. They would need him again to clean up their messes, him and Scully. Someone else knew it too. They had a friend at the FBI, or close enough to it that perhaps the wheels could be set in motion. The X-Files might be reinstated. He and Scully might return to delving into the inexplicable mysteries, categorizing the things that defied explanation or rationalization.

He picked up the phone and dialed her number.

"Scully," she said. 

"If the larval stage looked like a normal flukeworm, would the adult stage be a run of the mill fluke or another humanoid mutation?" he asked. "Would it be as large as its progenitor? How exactly did the progenitors of this fluke acquire the human genetic material? Would feeding on radioactive human flesh create such a radical change in such a simplistic creature? Would it be possible for the fluke to reproduce with a normal turbellaria, and if so, would the mutations breed true?"

"Hopefully we won't find out," she began, and rambled on like a cryptobiological textbook as he sat listening in the effervescent light from his aquarium.


End file.
